Sure, this is true for East Asians (though some ‘stereotypical’ appearances do exist), but you added Vietnamese, which extends to southeast Asia.
While there may be borderline cases, I’m going to guess most Vietnamese or Koreans will be able to tell nationality between a mixed group of Vietnamese and Koreans at much better than a 50% rate.
And individuals’ll still look different to each other.
Are you sure that this is a reliable taxonomy?
No, I’m pretty sure that’s everybody.
Don’t remember who the ‘we’ was, Chronos. If I recall correctly the study was prompted by “They all look alike” remarks regarding to Asians during the Viet Nam war era, so the test subjects may very well have been Caucasian. Just don’t know.
It’s my understand that’s how it works. If you live among ethnic group X, who (for example) vary a lot in chin size but who all have high cheekbones, then your facial recognition system will learn to pay attention to chin size but ignore cheekbones. If you then run across ethnic group B who all have small chins but variable cheekbones, they’ll “all look alike” to you because your facial recognition system is ignoring the parts of their faces that vary and trying to identify them by the parts that are all like. At least until you have enough experience with them that your facial recognition system retrains itself.
I wouldn’t consider it racist unless the person in question insists that it’s an objective fact and not their own inexperience. Subjectively “they all look alike to me” can be a true statement.
This seems completely backwards to me. Growing up in a multiethic region should make it easier to identify individuals from different ethnicities. Because, you know… you’re actually around them. Whereas if you grow up in an ethnically homogenous region, you’re going to have more trouble recognizing individuals outside of your ethnicity, because you almost never meet any.
I am not great with facial recognition, so when I watch a black and white movie, if there are two platinum blond women, I can’t tell them apart. Or two dark-haired men in suits. So basically everyone looks the same to me. I assume I’m cuing off things I’m used to looking for just because my facial recognition software is so lousy.
Even with people I know very well, I try to remember what they were wearing so that I’ll recognize them more quickly.
Voices, on the other hand, are very distinctive!
It is not racist necessarily, and I have made the same mistake with white people before. But when it happens more than a few times, it can annoy you.
There’s only one other black chick who works on my floor. We look absolutely nothing alike. And yet people are always mixing up our names. When I first started working there, people would ask if I was related to her. It’s not racist, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work a nerve sometimes.
Also, I have to relay this story because it’s so crazy and it just happened not that long ago.
I know an normal, everyday woman who–after knowing me for about a month-- summoned up enough courage to ask me what my racial background was. When I told her, she acted surprised. She figured I was Hispanic or something, but not black. OK, not a big deal. Happens frequently enough.
So it’s Halloween. I tell her that my twin sister–who she knows looks very similar to me–is dressing up like Tina Turner. She frowns up and says we look nothing like Tina Turner. Again, not a big deal. She obviously doesn’t get the point of Halloween, but not a big deal. But what she said next bowled me over. “You guys look like Michele Obama. You have the same skin and hair and everything! That’s who she should go as!”
I tell you, if the scene had been in a movie, it would have been one of those “breaking down the fourth wall” moments.
So, she thought you looked like Hispanic Michelle Obama?
Certainly that’s my personal experience. When I was a kid, I almost never met any black people, and there were seldom any on TV; and to me at that age they did “look all alike”. Eventually I saw more and more of them, and now they look as individual as anyone else.
A light-skinned, small-framed, short-haired Michelle Obama.
I look more like Barack than I do Michelle. Maybe she thinks they look alike too!
Michelle is the one with the First Guns!
Female South Koreans are probably the most similar looking people on the planet, due to their relatively narrow genepool, widespread cosmetic surgery and a conformist culture. Even with all this, there is still a lot of variation to tell them apart with.
The thing is, China, Vietnam and Japan have a lot of varation, as they are descended from multiple tribes. A person from one side of the border shouldn’t look two different from the other side. Most East Asians guess by using cultural ques
A Vietnamese friend once ranted about always being mistaken for Chinese and I reassured her, that it wasn’t that she looked Chinese, the Chinese people who resembled her were just Vietnamese people who were assimilated into Chinese culture.
Vietnamese are ethnically East Asian, but you are right, they look as different from Koreans as Swedes do from Spaniards.
I think you are overcomplicating things.
People learn to distinguish the differences between what they are familiar with. When I used to live around many South Asians, I could tell them apart very easily, when I live around East Asians, I have absolutely no problem telling them apart.
Just quickly skimmed through this thread, and didn’t spot any links to any Cecil columns.
In fact, the Master has dealt with this too.
I remember having read an article about people facing similar issues. It seems there’s a medical condition affecting a very small part of the population that makes people mostly unable to tell faces apart (not as a result of a accident, but from birth) and leads them to rely on other cues, like indeed clothes or voice.
Russians aALWAYS ask me if I’m jewish (I’m 25% arab) and seem surprised by the answer. They seem to have an eye for semites.
Took the words out of my mouth, there was a study done recently that stated just that, wish that I could remember its name and use it as a cite.
The racism industry is getting out of hand.
It’s racist to believe it, but not racist to acknowledge it. In other words, while in the Navy, I’ve run into people from almost every nationality there is. Dark-skinned Africans, light-skinned Africans, South Americans, North Americans (both of European and Native descent), Southeast Asians, Middle-Easterners, East Asians, etc. Now, in my brain, I know that all members of group x do not look alike. However, until I began associating regularly with people from different backgrounds, I’d still confuse “random person from group x” with "person from group x I met last week who has similar characteristics (i.e. height, hair color, facial hair, whatever). Fortunately, being in the Navy, we’re required to wear nametags on our uniforms, so I was able to confirm that I was in fact speaking with the person I’d met last week before putting my foot in my mouth.
The fact of the matter is, people from specific groups do have enough similar physical characteristics that an individual who is not familiar with them can have difficulty telling members apart-especially if they’re part of a group as opposed to one on one. If I see a group of Arabs protesting on CNN, my brain is going to recognize “a group of Arabs protesting,” and not process much beyond that.
Now, if I acknowledge the fact that I can’t tell people apart from group x, and take the time to learn the difference, I’m not being racist. For example, there is a man in my workcenter who is from China. I know what he looks like, and if you put him in a row with a dozen other Chinese men of similar heights, hairstyles, etc, I’ll be able to pick him out. Why? Because I’ve been exposed to enough Chinese people by now, that I can look for the differences in appearances that I’ve been able to do with Caucasians since day one.
If, however, I decided that because he was in a group with other Chinese men, I couldn’t identify him (because all Chinese men look alike), then that would be racist.
Marc
It’s not racist unless you do it knowingly (of the phenomenon) and/or repeat it, particularly if you think it’s funny/get kick out of saying such things to any ethnic group or nationality.
It’s worse than, say, you visit an unfamiliar foreign culture and after sampling some of their traditional form of music performed by various local musicians, with a smile you tell the musicians how all their songs sound the same.
It’s not your perception that is wrong; it’s your rational to think that it’s okay to make such remark to their face that is offensive, rude and ignorant .
I’ll be another voice of agreement with this. It’s not racist to not be able to tell people apart - I have a hard time within my own race sometimes. What can get into racist territory is believing that just because you can’t see the differences they aren’t there. Where it intersects with really troubling racism is when you believe that on a certain level all members of a race or ethnic group not only look the same but are actually the same person.